John Berger (born 1926) is one of the most intriguing and richly controversial figures in British arts and letters. Actually, since he lives full-time in France, he can scarcely be considered English in any meaningful way, and is indeed an international figure, widely regarded outside this country as one of Europe’s greatest intellectuals and quite often as some sort of cultural guru. Here he is thought of as a Marxist art critic, a dangerously potent broadcaster and a writer or novelist who defies categorisation. One suspects he is a bit of an embarrassment to the arts establishment, so he tends to be ignored. His residence abroad makes this easier, but Berger has a way of getting under the skin of the imagination, and, like the gritty irritant that results in an oyster, stimulating us — almost against our will — into thinking with independence and originality.
As a writer Berger has never been less than interesting, and the novels of his mature vision (beginning with Pig Earth in 1979) are intensely poetic and compelling. His essays are always worth reading, partly because of the fresh way in which they make us look at art and ourselves, but principally because of the delight in discovery that Berger is so good at provoking and sharing. In 2009, he gave a vast archive of material to the British Library consisting of 60 years’ worth of notes and papers. Aware of the potential monetary value of this cache, but typically reacting against such a commodification, Berger simply donated to the BL what other writers might have sold to a wealthy American institution. The material, which had been stored in his stables in the French Alps, was immured in a deep freeze for a couple of months to kill off the bugs, and then gradually sorted and identified.
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